So Chairo had his whole time free for the organization of his so-called Radical party, and he published, with the assistance of his supporters, a paper entitled Liberty, to which Neaera devoted all her spare time. She was uncommonly pretty, but like all these women, was capable of sudden changes of face and manner which, until I became accustomed to it, constantly surprised me; though, indeed, I remember having noticed it in some of the women of my own day whom we described then as "advanced." Neaera was already seated at a small tea table with a young man called Balbus, also a member of the Liberty staff, when we arrived and was engaged in earnest conversation with him. She looked at me scrutinizingly when I was presented to her, neither rising nor offering me her hand, and acknowledged the presentation only by a little conventional smile. There was something that seemed to me ill-bred in her keeping her seat when Lydia First and the rest of us arrived; but I soon discovered that Neaera was a person of no small importance, and expected attention from others which she did not herself concede. Our party seated itself about an adjoining table and presently Neaera called to me:
"Xenos, are you going to lecture at our hall?"
I had been invited by the Pater to lecture on the social, political, and economic conditions of the twentieth century. He had assumed that such a lecture would tend to strengthen the conservative and collectivist government; and Chairo had asked me to lecture at his hall in the hope, on the contrary, that it could be made to serve his own cause. I had been told that these lectures were usually followed by an open discussion, and I knew that it was from this discussion that both parties hoped to draw arguments to sustain their views respectively. Fearing, therefore, to become involved in their political animosities I had not yet decided whether I would lecture or not, so I answered:
"I am not sure; I feel a little the need of understanding your own conditions better than I do, before undertaking to contrast them with those of our day."
"We'll undertake to explain our conditions," she said, with an oblique smile at Balbus, "if you'll let us."
"I could wish for no pleasanter instruction," I answered.
"But I see you have Aunt Tiny," retorted she maliciously.
"Oh, I haven't taken him in hand yet," said Aunt Tiny, taking the suggestion au grand sérieux, "but," she added encouragingly, "I will! I will!"
Balbus threw his head back and laughed outrageously.